


ah, Dostoevsky

by leiascully



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Community: dogdaysofsummer, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-25
Updated: 2006-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius went to Russia because he couldn't speak Russian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ah, Dostoevsky

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Prompt was Dostoevsky.  
> Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ and all related characters are the property of JK Rowling and Scholastic. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

Sirius went to Russia because he couldn't speak Russian. Words had done nothing for him in the past: he'd lost Remus, he'd lost his family. Regulus was stranded, pale in the shadows of the Black house with Bella lurking somewhere, and even the memory of his brother's face twisted with anger couldn't stop the jerk of Sirius' heart when he thought of Reg drifting through the ghostly corridors of 12 Grimmauld the way Sirius himself was drifting through the awful streets of Petersburg, the dust, the crowds, the despair.

He talked with his hands, mostly, the hands that Remus had thought were elegant, the hands that his mother had said were born for magic. How proud he had been when Ollivander praised his handling of those many wands as they tested the depth of magic in Sirius' bones and his father had smiled one of those rare dangerous smiles. The Cyrillic letters reminded him of Arithmancy and Ancient Runes and he turned his head, trying not to think of whispering all through class to Remus, who took diligent notes, and trying not to think of Reg in his green tie with his dark head bent over a book in the library.

It was stifling in St. Petersburg and he couldn't breathe: too much history, the blood of the worker and the agony of the czar mingling with the plaster in the air and the chaff from the flour of the million loaves of brown bread that were more precious than life. But he had suffocated in London as well, and in the green fields of the countryside, and in the pristine Alps, and by the sunny Mediterranean. He liked Russia because it made no pretense about killing him. It was natural to be miserable in Petersburg.

Sirius moved through the crowded, lonely streets without noticing the stench. He lived in it, the miasma of unhappiness and urban filth. It was a dark city even suspended at the height of summer, when England would be lying broad and green in the bright ocean and the narrowest alley in London would have intermittent pools of sunlight for the toughs to stand in as they smoked, leaning against warm brick walls. He had always been a romantic.

He talked with his pale hands, gesturing for this or that, negotiating with a frown for the dark bread and the rounds of cheese, and all the words built up inside him. He wrote long letters on the coarse paper that was all he had and he forgot the sound of his own voice and the way magic felt. It was to have been their golden summer. When he woke in the mornings on his thin pallet, his toes were frostbitten and ached through the pointless days.


End file.
